Elise dreamed strange dreams that night, filled with dragons and wizards and magnificent, dazzling rubies. She tossed and turned so much that by the time she woke up, all of her blankets and sheets had fallen to the floor of her bedroom in a tangled mess.

She sat up slowly and glanced at the glowing numbers on her alarm clock, which told her it was still twenty-two minutes until the five o’clock alarm would start blaring at her. She rubbed her eyes, trying to rub away the last vestiges of sleep. Her stomach flip-flopped with a mixture of fear and excitement as the events of the previous day came back to her in a rush. Her son was a dragon shifter, and one with a special talent for ghosting. Holden could help him learn to use his shifter abilities properly. But there was also a war going on that might threaten the safety of the entire world. A powerful dragon ruby was missing, and Holden and Violet were part of an alliance of wizards and shifters that were trying to find the ruby. Violet was a wizard. But she was not Holden’s girlfriend. Holden had kissed Elise last night.

He kissed me! Elise thought, her mind settling on this one thought.

Elise touched her lips gingerly, as though afraid to rub away the memory of the kiss. The kiss had taken her by surprise. She’d been admiring Holden since the first moment she’d met him, but she’d never expected him to actually notice her. She’d figured a guy like him would have plenty of options for women—women who were far more beautiful than her, who had their lives together and weren’t scraping to make ends meet by always working double shifts at a small town diner. Oh, and women who didn’t come with the baggage of a twelve-year-old son.

Elise fell back against the mattress and stared up at the ceiling, which looked gray in the faint gray light of early dawn. How could she have been so stupid, to let herself fall for Holden? And then to let him kiss her like that? She’d been caught up in the moment, that was all—swept off her feet by the fact that he had so generously promised to protect her son. But she had to make sure that the next time she saw him, he knew that their kiss had been a one-time event. It was precisely her need to protect her son that had kept her from ever having a serious romance after Nick’s dad left for the army. The last thing Elise wanted was for her son to finally have a male role model in his life, only to have that man disappear again. As soon as Elise started getting close to a guy, she would clam up and come up with an excuse to break things off. She couldn’t bear to think of the pain in Nick’s eyes if he finally thought he had a dad, only to have that dad desert him.

Which was why Elise could not allow things between her and Holden to grow romantically. Holden had offered to protect and help Nick. Elise wasn’t going to mess that up by starting a relationship with the man, no matter how goddamn sexy he was. If Elise never dated Holden, there was no chance of her eventually having an awful breakup with Holden. There was no chance of Nick viewing Holden as a father figure only to have Holden leave because of Elise.

Elise sat up again and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She was destined to be alone, at least until Nick was grown, and that was all there was to it. There was no sense in feeling sorry for herself. She had a lot to be thankful for, after all. She had a job, and a place to live. That was more than a lot of people could say. And she had a wonderful son, who gave her the inspiration she needed to keep moving forward. Life was hard now, but every sacrifice Elise made, she was making for Nick. He was worth it. Because of her hard work now, he would have a better future.

A little less than an hour later, as Elise cracked the door open to Nick’s bedroom to whisper goodbye before heading off to work, she did her best to remind herself that she was doing this all for him. He slept soundly, not even stirring when she looked in. With a sigh, she closed the door again and left the apartment, locking the front door behind her. She’d left a twenty dollar bill and a note on the kitchen counter, telling him to use the money to cover breakfast and lunch for himself. She’d have to go grocery shopping later, even though she knew she’d be dog tired by the time she was done with her shift.

Hell, she felt dog tired right now, even though she’d barely started her day. Yesterday had been draining, and Elise wished she could call in this morning, even though she needed the money. But she knew she was already going to be in trouble for calling in last night. She didn’t dare miss her morning shift, too. As she locked the door behind her, she felt her phone buzzing in her pocket. She looked down to see a message from Holden on the screen.

I’ll stop by and see Nick later this morning, if that’s okay with you? I want to make sure he’s doing alright.

Elise smiled, and texted back an Okay. It would be torture sticking to her decision to keep Holden at arm’s distance from herself, but it was worth it for Nick’s sake. Holden was going to be a good influence in Nick’s life, and it had been too long since the boy had had a true friend.

 

* * *

 

Holden glanced at his watch and knocked on the apartment door again. It was half past ten. Surely, Nick was awake by now? Violet had warned him that he might be going too early, but he’d brushed off her concerns, saying that even preteens wouldn’t sleep later than ten. Apparently, he’d been wrong. Holden frowned. He hated being wrong, especially when it meant that Violet was right. The two of them had a long-running competition over who could be right more often. At the moment, it felt like Violet was pulling hopelessly into the lead.

Holden glanced down at the box of donuts he’d brought, and was about to knock again, when he heard the lock on the door click. The door swung open a moment later, and Holden found himself staring at a very sleepy looking Nick. The boy’s dark curly hair was a mess, sweaty and flattened against his scalp, and he still wore the plaid cotton pajama pants he’d put on before bed last night. Holden said a silent prayer of thanks that Violet was not here to witness this. She would have taken great pleasure in rubbing into his face the fact that Nick had just woken up.

“I brought donuts,” Holden said, holding up the box and hoping that sugar was an acceptable peace offering for waking up a twelve-year-old.

Nick said nothing, but opened the door wider and started walking toward the kitchen. Holden followed, closing the door behind him and setting the box of donuts down on the dining room table. Nick went to the refrigerator and grabbed a carton of milk. He sat down at the table and grabbed a chocolate sprinkle donut from the box, wolfing it down in two bites and then drinking several swigs of milk directly from the carton. Holden eyed him with amusement, and Nick must have noticed because he finally spoke at that point.

“Don’t tell my mom. She hates it when I don’t use a glass.”

Holden made a motion of zipping his lips shut and throwing away the key. “Your secret’s safe with me,” he said.

Nick’s only response was to grab another donut, which he ate only slightly slower than the first. When he was done, he took another couple of swigs from the milk carton and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Did Mom send you over here?” he asked, eyeing Holden with a bit of suspicion.

Holden leaned back in his chair. “No. I wanted to come over. You had a big day yesterday, and I wanted to see how you were feeling today?”

Nick wouldn’t meet Holden’s eyes. “I’m alright,” he said. “Considering I just found out I’m a dragon.”

“Hey, I might be a bit biased, but I think being a dragon is actually pretty cool.”

“I’m not so sure,” Nick said. “It seems like shifters do awful things. That’s not the kind of life I want.”

Holden frowned. “What makes you think shifters do awful things?” he asked. “Of course, shifters have great power. But you can control that power. I’ll teach you how. You can use your talents for good.”

“I’ve never seen a shifter do good things. Not until you, I guess,” Nick said sullenly.

Holden felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He didn’t have a lot of experience with preteens, as his too-early arrival showed. But he knew enough to realize that there was something Nick wasn’t telling him right now.

“What do you mean, you’ve never seen a shifter do good things?” Holden asked. “How many shifters have you seen?”

Nick didn’t answer him. Instead he grabbed another donut and turned so that his face was angled away from Holden.

“Nick, this is really important,” Holden said, trying to keep his voice from betraying the dread he was starting to feel. “How many shifters have you seen?”

Nick shrugged, and didn’t answer. Holden forced himself not to push the boy, but he had to figure out a way to make Nick talk. Something about the way Nick was acting made Holden think he hadn’t been as innocent about the existence of shifters as he’d acted yesterday. While Holden was still mulling over what to say, Nick turned to face him, narrowing his eyes.

“Who sent you here?” he asked. “To Blackstone, I mean. And how did you know I was here?”

Holden’s senses were all on high alert. There was definitely something Nick wasn’t telling him. “No one sent me to you, Nick,” Holden said, keeping his voice neutral. “I was sent to Blackstone to scout out some…disturbances in the shifter world. But I had no idea that you were here until I saw your eyes glowing and churning outside the diner the morning I rescued you from that big fight.”

Nick stared at Holden, squinting his eyes as though trying to decide whether what the older man had said was true. And then, to Holden’s great surprise, Nick burst into tears.

“I don’t want to be a shifter! I don’t want to be one of them! How did they do this to me? Did you have a part in it?”

Holden was taken completely off guard by the outburst. He reached across the table to try to grab Nick’s hand, but the boy pulled away, flinging donut sprinkles across the table as he did. Holden suddenly had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Nick, you’ve seen shifters before yesterday, haven’t you?”

Nick looked up at him and sniffed. He wiped away a few tears, then nodded.

“Where?”

“In the tunnel,” Nick said. “I…I know I shouldn’t have been there. I could tell it was dangerous. But everything was so strange. It was like a real life video game, and I couldn’t stay away. My life here is so boring, and…and…I was so careful to keep them from seeing me. But they must have, somehow. And they turned me into one of them. And now I’m an awful dragon, and I’m going to do awful things. My mom works so hard to give me a good life and I’ve ruined it all.”

Nick started wailing again. Holden slid over so that he was in the seat next to the boy, instead of across the table from him. He took Nick by the shoulders and gently shook him.

“Nick! Nick, listen to me. No one turned you into a shifter. I told you, it’s genetic. You’ve been a shifter since the day you were born. It’s just taken a while for you to realize it. But I need to know what this tunnel is. Who are these shifters you’re talking about?”

Nick sniffed again, then turned to look at Holden. To Holden’s relief, Nick seemed to finally focus on what Holden was saying. “There’s an underground tunnel that goes from the caves outside of Blackstone all the way to some caves that are between here and Sandview. The tunnel is old and I don’t think a lot of people know about it. I found it one day by accident when I was really young, and I’ve spent a lot of my childhood riding my bicycle back and forth between here and the Sandview caves.”

“But Sandview is fifty miles away!” Holden said. “That’s a really long bike ride.”

Nick shook his head. “No, the Sandview caves are a lot closer than Sandview itself. It’s probably about twenty miles from here? And I’ve always been pretty fast on a bike.”

“Of course you have,” Holden said, rubbing his forehead. “You’re a shifter after all.”

Holden was starting to feel sick to his stomach. If Nick knew about shifters because of some caves near Sandview, that could only mean one thing: Nick had inadvertently discovered Saul’s hideout. Holden was about to ask Nick for more details, but the boy had started talking again of his own accord. It seemed that once Nick finally started confessing to his little tunnel trips, the words just came tumbling out.

“A few months ago, the Sandview caves, which had been empty for as long as I’ve known about them, were suddenly full of people. The first time I saw people there, I hid from them because I thought I’d get in trouble if anyone saw me and told mom that I’d been in the tunnel. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that the real danger wasn’t someone tattling on me. These people were strange, and not nice. They could change from human to animal form and back again. They brought people in and tortured them. I think they were people from Sandview, but I’m not sure. The animal people, uh, I guess you call them shifters, were very strong. They held the torture victims down and some other people used rings to hurt them. I didn’t understand it at the time, but now I know the people with the rings were wizards, like Violet. Only they weren’t nice like Violet. They used their magic to do mean things.”

Holden sat back in his chair, stunned. “My god, Nick,” he finally said. “You found Saul’s hideout.”

“Saul?” Nick asked.

Holden figured there was no point in keeping details from Nick any longer. He explained to the boy about the war that was raging between the good and evil shifters and wizards. He told Nick how Saul had been building an army of bat shifters near Sandview, and, as Nick had seen, torturing the townspeople. When Holden was finished speaking, Nick frowned and picked up another donut, munching it slowly.

“Yeah,” Nick finally said. “They’re not very nice. When I started to turn into a dragon myself—just an arm or a leg at the time—I resisted it as hard as I could. I thought they’d done something to turn me into one of them. Are you sure that’s not the case?”

“I’m sure,” Holden said. “Shifters are born, not created. But what probably happened is that being around other shifters made your inner dragon restless, and sped up the inevitable process of your dragon forcing its way out.”

Nick considered this for a second. “I feel a lot better today than I have in a long time.”

Holden nodded. “That’s because you allowed yourself to shift. You won’t ever feel as awful as you did before you shifted yesterday, as long as you keep shifting at regular intervals. But tell me, do Saul’s soldiers know about the tunnel?”

Nick considered this for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he said. “They never mentioned it as far as I heard. And I never saw anyone come anywhere near the entrance. It’s not that surprising. I think that tunnel is about a hundred years old. It must have been built with dynamite blasts way back in the day. Kaboom!”

Nick threw his hands up above his head to mimic the motion of an explosion, and Holden chuckled. It didn’t matter what age boys were—they all seemed to love the idea of things getting blown to smithereens. But Holden didn’t care much why the tunnel had been built, or how. He was just glad to hear that Saul’s men seemed oblivious to its existence.

“And what about the wizards and shifters who were torturing people,” Holden asked. “Can you remember anything of what they were saying? What kind of questions were they asking the people they were hurting?”

Nick furrowed his brow. “I don’t really remember. It was hard to understand them, and I was more interested in the flashes of light from their rings, or in the way the shifters turned into animals and back again. Besides, I didn’t dare get too close. I didn’t want any of them to see me.”

Holden shook his head in amazement. “Nick, you don’t even realize how lucky you are that you’re a ghoster. If you’d been a normal shifter, or even just a normal human, those shifters would have smelled you coming from a mile away. They would have known you were there, even if you were quiet and stayed out of sight. I seriously can’t believe your luck.”

Nick, for his part, seemed unmoved by this observation. He shrugged, and continued munching on his donut, looking thoughtful. After finishing the sweet treat, he looked over at Holden with apprehension in his eyes.

“Are you sure that I won’t do awful things, like those shifters I saw?” Nick asked. “I don’t want to be a bad person.”

Holden smiled at him. “You’re a good kid, Nick, and you have a good heart. Being a shifter doesn’t automatically make you good or bad, just like being a human doesn’t automatically make you good or bad. You’re going to be just fine, trust me. In fact, there might be a way you can help us win this war, thanks to your ghoster abilities and your knowledge of the tunnel.”

“Really?” Nick asked, perking up. “That would be so cool.”

Holden laughed. “Yes, really. But first I need to talk to Violet and let her know everything you’ve told me. And then we have to talk to your mom and see if she’ll allow it.”

Nick made a face. “If it’s anything remotely dangerous, she’s going to say no. She’s horribly overprotective.”

“Well, I’m not going behind her back. I promised her I’d take care of you. Chin up, though. I’m sure we’ll be able to find a way for you to help the war effort, no matter how overprotective your mother is.”

“I’m not so sure,” Nick said glumly, slumping in his seat.

Holden said nothing, but, from what he’d seen of Elise so far, he had a feeling Nick’s worries were justified. She was overly protective of her son. Not that Holden could blame her. The boy was all she had in the world. Still, he had to at least try to convince her that the plan he was formulating was a good one. If he couldn’t, his only other option was going to be a big, bloody battle—one that might leave him and several other good shifters and wizards dead. And he couldn’t protect Nick anymore if he was dead. Holden was surprised at how much this thought troubled him. He looked over at Nick and smiled, tousling the boy’s hair. He’d meant it when he said Nick was a good kid. He could see great potential in the boy’s wary green eyes. It was sad that the boy had never had a shifter father to guide him, but Holden knew he could make a big difference in Nick’s life if he only had a little bit of time.

“We’ll figure something out, kid. I promise,” Holden said.

And Holden would figure out a way to involve Nick in the war effort safely, if it was the last thing he did. Dragons don’t break promises, after all.